sciencehabit writes: A group of researchers is proposing a radical approach to halt the HIV/AIDS epidemic: Go on a spending spree. Pouring more than $60 billion into treatment, massive prevention campaigns, and condom distribution over the next 5 years—instead of slowly doling out the money over 2 decades, as is currently planned—will effectively stop the spread of the disease, according to a new model. Governments, nongovernmental organizations, and charities spend about $9 billion a year on these efforts, even though they have much more at their disposal. The proposed strategy, referred to as "utopian modeling" by one epidemiologist, would pour all the resources into fighting--and hopefully ending--the epidemic in one fell swoop. This might take $63 billion over 5 years, but could be much more effective than current attempts to address the disease. Other researchers point out that the such a plan might create a false impression that a solution for the HIV/AIDS epidemic is just a matter of spending money, and discourage the development of new treatments and vaccines.

Unfortunately a cure for diseases like AIDS is unlikely to be found because it is a lot more profitable to provide relief medicine to the infected patients for years and years to come, than to cure them once. For this exact reason the powers that be will make sure that this effort also does not see the light of day. Money drives everything.

hm, 9 bn per year already makes 45 bn in 5 years, so it is just missing 18 bn, or 3.6 per year, or another 40%. If somebody could state why this is that real huge difference, it would not seem to be impossible to persuade governments and others to follow this proposal, i guess...